History of Myers Briggs

I am starting a new series of post on my favorite topic, Personality Type and how it can change your life. I have witnessed dramatic realizations in my client’s lives from understanding and applying some simple principles from Type and I want to share as much of this information as I can with everyone interested. I am going to be breaking Type down in a number of different ways in coming posts but I knew I needed to start with the basics.

Let me first start by saying……this blog is about the history of Type but what I teach isn’t your boring, old, HR way of teaching Type. I went through “that” boring Type workshop my first job out of college as well. Today, I have dedicated my life to bring you what I have learned in the past 20 years with Myers Briggs Personality Type, a successful Psychotherapy practice seeing countless couples in crisis, and my own life experiences with heart, guts, grit, authenticity, love and creativity. For those of you that think you know your type, stay tuned, I promise to bring you some good, juicy, new content sure to ROCK YOUR WORLD:)

So, let’s start with some basics for this week.

Today the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most widely used Personality Assessment tool in the world. Based on the work of Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung. Mother and daughter team Isabel Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs picked up Jung’s work and were the developers of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® instrument. (One of the things I love the most about this tool is that this mother and daughter team back in the 40’s did this ground breaking work. What strong, powerful women!)

All personality types and preferences are valuable. Not there is no right or wrong type.

Personality type can be used for building awareness of individual differences, enhancing understanding of self and others, and appreciating the strengths and gifts of self and others. It provides a language and framework to use when resolving conflict.

There are four pairs of preferences E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P and everyone uses both the preferred and non-preferred side of each preference, as necessary to adapt and thrive. (In my workshops and one-on-one work I go through a short but powerful exercise to demonstrate how this works.)

Personality preferences are only one aspect of individual differences. Many other factors contribute to an individual’s behavior. (Some examples are Family of Origin, birth order, culture of origin, past traumas, etc.) I have a friend this it also an ENFJ but she is an only child. We approached friendships quite differently since she grew up without siblings and I grew up with a sister as a best friend.

Individuals are the best judge of their own personality type; therefore simply taking a test online is NOT the most accurate form of discovering your Type. Discussing the results with a professional is highly advised and can help find your “True Fit” type. (I offer the full on-line assessment plus follow up call to discuss in detail your results)

A four letter whole type is more than the sum of the individual preferences. Each preference interacts with the others to form one of the sixteen whole types. (I list all 16 type’s on my website for you to access)

Personality type is innate! Although an individual’s type itself does not change, people can use and develop all eight preferences throughout their life. Life circumstance can affect the results of your assessment. (This is always an area of debate and one I love to discuss)

This work is about discovering and exploring YOUR Innateness and Greatness. There is a movement these days on finding ourselves in order to lead more fulfilling lives and I believe knowing your type is the first step in that process. Stay tuned for more posts!

* I embrace my imperfection so please excuse any grammatical or spelling errors:)

What I really love about this article is how you use this tool to uncover a person’s Innateness and Greatness. Thanks for starting out with the basics in a easy to understand flow. Can’t wait to learn more.

Jessica, I am looking forward to your posts, because in working with many different assessment tools in business over the years, I’ve found two things about Myers-Briggs. 1) It is very accurate, helpful, and valuable when interpreted by a knowledgeable, trained, person (not me), and 2) it is somewhat complicated with the 4 letter type. Thanks in advance for sharing more so I can dive deeper into what I only know peripherally.

Jessica, the comment that struck me in this post is that “personality types are innate.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to change who I was just to come right back to where I’ve been. I’m old enough now to embrace and understand most of my quirks. Learning what traits exist because of personality type will be so very helpful. Looking forward to more posts!